Big audience for Titans-Texans; record low for Astros on Saturday

The Texans’ early-season perils may be hazardous to fans’ mental well-being, but they work well for TV ratings.

Houston’s overtime win Sunday over the Titans recorded a 24.8 Nielsen rating on KHOU (Channel 11) with a 51 share and an average audience of 891,000 viewers. That means that an average audience of almost one-quarter of the 2,289,360 TV households in the 20-county Houston area, or about 567,761 households, watched the game, and 51 percent of TVs in use during the noon to 3:30 p.m. time frame were tuned to Channel 11.

That compares to 22.2/44 for the Week 1 home opener against the Dolphins last year and 22.5/45 for the Week 2 game at Jacksonville.

The audience topped out at 31.4/59 between 3:15 and 3:30 p.m.

At the other end of the spectrum in the most literal sense of the phrase, the Astros on Saturday had a record low audience for their game against the Angels on CSN Houston. The game had a 0.04 Nielsen rating, which represents an average audience of about 915 households or about 1,000 viewers on average. The previous low was 0.05 for an Astros-Reds game on Sept. 9, 2012, on Fox Sports Houston, the team’s former carrier.

Sunday’s game did slightly better, with a 0.1 rating and measurable viewership in six quarter-hours.

As for commentary on these developments, the numbers say what the numbers say about the state of baseball and CSNH on NFL Sundays in Houston.

Moving on, here are the national weekend major-market ratings for major sports events: